The Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) specification was developed to establish an industry common interface enabling robust operating system (OS) directed motherboard device configuration and power management of both devices and entire systems. ACPI is a key element in OS and utility application directed configuration and power management.
ACPI is the primary mechanism for providing system configuration information. Configuration information is important for utilities that display system information, OS utilities that decide the most efficient resource allocation for the I/O subsystem, HOT-Plug-X (peripheral component interface, version X), etc.
Previous systems and method of configuration management tools were unable to satisfactorily provide for discovering I/O bus capabilities of a computer system in order to provide for efficient allocation of resources when performing configuration management.